Roy T. Fielding wrote:
>
> >I suggest considering eliminating COPY and instead using
> >PUT, but when the value being PUT is Content-Type:
> >message/external-body, then the server can copy the data
> >from the original source.
>
> I disagree. Doing a PUT of a message/external-body means you want
> to create or replace a resource that consists of a message/external-body.
> The same problem applies with using multipart/related to imply a different
> action than that requested by the method.
>
> Not surprisingly, I prefer COPY for asking the server to perform a copy,
> and the PATCH method for asking the server to perform a partial update.
> PATCH had the additional benefit that it was independent of content-type,
> and thus I wouldn't have to argue with Fabio about VTML or the MIME folks
> about multipart/mixed+message/partial or any number of other data formats
> that are great for some tasks and not for others.
>
> These and other failed attempts at standardizing WEBDAV functionality
> within HTTP can be seen in
>
> http://www.ics.uci.edu/pub/ietf/http/history/draft-ietf-http-v11-spec-01.html
>
> .....Roy
I think in MIME that "message" and "multipart" are treated specially.
They're not just "application", they're media type where the sender
intends for the recipient to actually unwrap the message. I don't think
you should *ever* store something as "multpart". Rather, a content
negotiated resource is "multpart/alternative", message/http is just
another wrapper around the HTTP message as if the wrapper weren't there,
etc.
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